This isn’t how it works at all. If you spend less than 183 days/year in a country, you typically won’t have tax residency there. It’s quite normal for countries to tax locally sourced income, regardless of tax residency status. But a remote worker isn’t going to have any locally sourced income.

Even if you do get tax residency in a new country, there are many cases where that wouldn’t entitle them to tax a remote worker’s income anyway. For instance if you had tax residency in a new country, and tax residency at home at the same time, and there was a double taxation between the two countries, your home country would likely retain the exclusively right to tax you for all or most of that income.

So you are saying a contractor working for a company outside of their country doesn’t have to pay income taxes. I think you found the best loophole ever /s

Obviously, being a contractor for a foreign company doesn’t excuse you from paying taxes. The same applies if you are employed except now you are employed illegally by a foreign company. The employee isn’t the only one who gets in trouble, fwiw. I worked for a 100% remote company and there were legal guides for being a nomad. If you didn’t follow the advice, it was grounds for immediate firing.

Some countries don’t care, some, like Italy, will arrest you in a heartbeat. And some, will just fine you for every day you “worked” (the US).

For the US, tax residency for the entire year is 33 days. If you are an expat, this is something you acutely aware of, because you can lose your foreign income exclusion for 5 years if you go back for too long. For most other countries, it’s ~180 days to become a tax resident, but that usually only applies in certain situations (like in Europe, if you are a tax resident of another EU country) otherwise it is 0 days.

> So you are saying a contractor working for a company outside of their country doesn’t have to pay income taxes.

No, I’m saying (and I’ll just copy paste it):

> If an employee simply picks up and starts doing their job from another country, they will almost certainly be still paying all the same taxes they usually pay in the country where their job is located.

There is no country in the world that claims to have tax residency over visitors on their 0th day after arrival. Working during a business trip, or while on vacation doesn’t create a tax liability in the country you’re visiting. Otherwise people would be routinely filing tax returns with foreign governments after business trips or vacations, which everybody reading this comment knows you don’t have to do.

Almost every country in the world has zero day tax policies (US included). A remote work visa in Spain has you paying taxes the moment you hit the ground. Same with a DAFT visa in the Netherlands, or a business visa in Bali. The fun part is, if you spend more than 33 days that year in the US, you’ll be paying double taxes that year — even with a double-taxation treaty. A tourist visa often doesn’t excuse you from paying income taxes either, like the US. Tax laws are usually weird, and translations aren’t often available (which are separate from visa laws).

Applying for a visa with work entitlements is a completely different scenario from doing remote work on a temporary entrance visa. Which is what most digital nomads will be using (without creating any foreign tax liabilities for themselves).

Even then you’re confusing tax residency with tax liability. You can arrive in a country, and immediately create tax liability for yourself (by getting locally sourced income for example). But you’re not going to get tax residency until you’ve spent some minimum period there (usually ~6 months), even if that residency is back dated to the day your first arrived.